Author Archives: Edward Kelly

06/29 – More Statesmanship, Less Leadership Please!

June 2019 / Feature Articles

Edward Kelly

According to this model of adult development, less than 10% of our leaders have the developmental capacity to match the complexity of the issues they face, and that includes President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May. This mismatch, which gets resolved at the next stage in our or their development, looks more like statesmanship than leadership.

How much better off would we be to have statesmanship as our model of good leadership, rather …

05/31 – Third Act In Life

Notes from the Field / May 2018

Edward J Kelly

 “When the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do sir”? John Milton Keynes

It is self-evident that each one of us is an individual and that as individuals we are impacted, directly or indirectly, by the organisations we are associated with. In turn, organisations and individuals are all enmeshed in a society of which they are part. Each is therefore inter-dependent; individuals on organisations, and organisations and individuals on society …

05/31 – Edward Kelly

Letters to Russ / May 2018

I wanted to add a short message of appreciation to those many others
who have already expressed their deep regard for Russ. In my case it
was his ongoing encouragement to write; initially three articles for
The Integral Leadership Review and then later to sign a book contract
with him. I was delighted to complete the articles but I still,
haven’t completed the book. Russ could see more than I could and
when he couldn’t he …

10/9 – Review of The Third Act Workshop

Notes from the Field / August-November 2015

Edward Kelley

ed kelly

INTRODUCTION

 Over the past 2-3 years we have run a number of retreats on The Third Act in life. In April of this year we also ran a successful Third Act Conference. More recently we have been running Third Act workshops in which we have moved our attention to what work we can do and what organisational structure might be best suited to support that work. Here is a short update.

WHAT IS THE

6/16 – Charles Handy and the Curves of Life

Fresh Perspective / April - June 2015

Edward J. Kelly

Edward: Charles could we start by talking about your latest book The Second Curve and how you came up with the concept?

Charles: It has been around in my mind for quite a long time and I wrote about it originally 20 years ago. I was always intrigued by the first curve, the sigmoid curve, which people use. Well, particularly in business, they use it to describe the product life cycle. And then …

8/15 – A Developmental Autobiography: Plateaus and Transitions in My Development as an Adult

Feature Articles / August - November 2014

Third in a Three Part Series

Edward J Kelly

Abstract

This is the third in a series of articles for the Integral Leadership Review in which I have attempted to explain my research on adult development. As readers of the previous two articles will note, I have explored this topic in depth by looking at Warren Buffett’s development and how it impacted his success, particularly as a leader. Following an Action Inquiry design (Torbert et al, …

Warren Buffet’s Transformation in Leadership: Part 2

Feature Articles / June 2013

Edward J. Kelly

Abstract

Despite the intuitive feel of constructive-developmental theory (Kegan, 1980; 1994; McCauley et al., 2006; Torbert, 1987, 1994, 2004), it has had very little impact on the mainstream literature in leadership development. One reason for this maybe a lack of exemplars to tell the developmental story. The findings from this research may help to change that. My study of Warren Buffett concludes that Buffett’s development has gone through ‘seven transformations in meaning-making’ and

Transformation in Leadership, Part 1: A Developmental Study of Warren Buffett

Feature Articles / March 2013

Edward J. Kelly

Abstract

The following is a summary of my developmental research on Warren Buffett. The study concludes that Warren Buffett has gone through seven transformations in leadership and that his character development is largely responsible for his success as a leader.

Introduction

I first became actively interested in Warren Buffett in 1995 having read Roger Lowenstein’s The Making of an American Capitalist. Sometime later I started trying to invest like Buffett and shortly